Go from Falmouth about Truro, St. Austellto the manor house of Lanhydrock.
As us mattered it has rained easily, the weather then has improved however fast und it became a beatiful, warm day.
The inspection lasted for approximately 2 hours.
We returned instead of a foot to the car park by a veteran car.

Lanhydrock

Tour of the House (£9.90 per person)

The Gatehouse

The charming little two-storeyed gatehouse built wholly of granite, was begun by John, Lord Robartes , in 1636, but remained unfinished until 1651. Decorated with a proliferation of arches and columns, it adds a touch of Renaissance feeling to a background of traditional plainness and is capped by numbers of the same stumpy obelisks which appear on the house, in the gardens and at the lodge gates. A contemporary drawing shows a small cupola on its roof, but this has long since disappeared. There is a very similar design with the same columns, arches and obelisks, at Trewan, near St. Columb , of the same date.
The main room on the first floor was probably used as a banqueting room - where ladies of the household could take light refreshments whilst watching their menfolk hunting in the park.
The two rooms now hold a variety of temporary exhibitions and house a collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century country furniture, including a number of unusual West Country-made Windsor-type chairs.

The Outer Hall

The two-storeyed entrance porch is part of the seventeenth-century house and survived the fire of 1881. It gives into the Outer Hall, a mellow satisfying room wholly of the 1880s internally, although the robust granite fireplace very probably survived the fire and thus came from the old house. Granite weathers so slightly when used inside a building that it is often hard to date.
The crisp Victorian plasterwork of frieze and ceiling is first encountered in the room. It is Jacobean in style and intended to reflect the original seventeenth-century plasterwork with which much of the old house was presumably decorated, again, some of it may have survived the fire. The work was carried out by the Davy brothers of Pensilva, a village on the edge of Bodmin Moor.

The Dining Room

This was one of the mostimportant rooms in a large Vicrorian houshold. The workmanship of the decoration is of the robust qualtity to be found throughout the house, and careful working drawings by Richard Coad, the architect, for the construction of joinery and plasterwork details ensured that there was no cutting corners. The theme of the ceiling and overmantel decoration is grapes and vines, appropriate to the function of the room. The blue and gilt Morris wallpaper is a reprodution of his "Sunflower" pattern.
The table is set for a typical High Victorian dinner. The meals served at Lanhydrock followed closely the type of menu given in Charles Francatelli's Cook's Guide (1862) , which became a culinary Bible in Victorian households (a copy survives at Lanhydrock). Menus were usually written in French, although the cuisine itself was probably more English. A typical dinner might consits of soup followed by a fish course, one or more "relevés or "removes" (usually roast meats), several entrées (side dishes). a second course (usually more roasts), and up to six "entremets", a term to describe both vegetables and puddings (entremets de douceu). As many as six kinds of wine might be served with such a menu. It is little wonder that eating could become more of an ordeal than a pleasure, and the stiff ceremony which often accompained a meal could be equally burdensome. Visitors will see something of the machinery required to produce theses meals in the Kitchen Quarters.

The Servery

This was an essential link between the Kitchen and Dining Room, and enabled food to be kept warm in the great steel hot-cupbord made by Clement Jeakes&Co. of Great Russell Street, London, which was fuelled by the coal-fired central-heating system. Final adjustments could also be made to the dishes before they were served. The room is conviently placed for both the China Cupboard and the Butler's Pantry, which are not open to the public. Its relation to the Dining Room was also cleverly contrived so that the butler and footmen could see what was going on from the main sideboard, but the guests could not easily see into the Servery.

The Kitchen Quarters

When the house was rebuilt in 1885, the opportunity was taken to provide service rooms of adequate size and fitted with every up-to-date device for hygiene and for convenience.

The Kitchen

This spledid room is built like a college hall with great wooden trusses supporting a high-gabled roof over clerestory windows. These are opened by shafting geared to the handwheels in the end dresser, and quickly removed stale air and smells. The louvres in the peak of the gable high above the open stove had a similar role.
The elaborate arrangment of roasting-spits is operated by a large fan fitted in the flue above the fire, which consumed coal in vast quantities. Several devoces could be used at once; fowls or game being roasted were hung on the chains, while joints turned on the spits. A warming cabinet (now in the Scullery) often stood in front of these spits, to reflect heat back on to the cooking meats, whilst also allowing prepared food to remain hot.
The "close range" against the Scullery wall seems modest by comparison and works in more or less the same way as a modern solid-fuel cooker. The copper "batterie de cuisine" was used here for "best" cooking, whilst the iron pots in the Scullery were used for vegetables.
The hatch in the far corner allowed food to be passed through to the passage outside the Butler's Pantry and thence to the Servery and the Dining Room.
Most of the tools and gadgets here have their counterpart in today's kitchen, but all of them needed a great deal of cleaning, for which adequate labour was then available. The cook, usually female, was helped by upwards of twenty other servants in this area.

The Scullery

This is fitted with slate-lined sinks for the preparation of vegetables and zinc-lined ones for washing up the kitchen crockery and utensils. The china and glass used by the family and in the Servants' Hall were washed elsewhere. Greasy pots could be scoured under the steam jets over the iron draining-board in the corner by the entrance door. Vegetables could be cooked in the small range in this room, which also held the stock-pot. To the left of the range is the coal chest, and behind the exit door a similar box held sawdust used in cleaning the slate floor.

The Bakehous

The baking equipment was supplied by Clement Jeakes & Co., which held Queen Victoria's Royal Warrant and also made the roasting-spit in the Kitchen.
Apart from the large quantities of bread required daily, it was here that scones, cakes and biscuits were baked. The oven takes four days to heat to a steady temperature but, once heated, is economics in coal. Below it is the proving oven where kneaded dough was put to rise before baking. Under the windows are flour chets, and a slate-lined sink for washing the baker's untesils.

The Dry Larder

Here were kept all the many sorts of dry food-stuffs which the nineteenth-century chef needed. Materials used in cooking meals were stored here, but not jams and chutneys, jellies and broths, which were made and kept in the Still Room, with its own kitchen, in the Houskeeper's Departments 50 yards away and not on the cook's part of the house.

The Fish Larder

This room contains cool slate slabs, ice chets, a fish safe in the corner, and shelves for storing both fresh and cooked fish. The ice was brought in blocks from a firm in Plymouth. The shallow copper box with a perforated lid was filled with hot water to keep a salmon warm while it was beeing carved.

The Meat Larder

Sides and joints of meat were hung from the stout steel bars across the ceiling and prepared on the iron-bound chopping-block and the dressing-tables under the window. Inside the door is a sloping slate sink to allow the dressed meat to drain. It was then kept in the isulated chest on the left.

The Dairy Scullery

Milk was brought from the Home Farm in churns in a pony cart and delivered to the oputside door. The churms were empried into pans standing in cold water in the long through against the left-hand wall. Whole milk was set aside for houshold use and the remainder used for the making of butter and clotted cream. To make butter, cream was skimmed off the top of the milk after this had stood for 24 hours, and then worked in the up-and-over tub on its stout wooden stand. In making clotted cream, the pants of milk were warmed on the scalding-range against the inner wall. This is heated by hot water pipes brought direct from the boiler house in the cellar below.
This room was one of the busiest in the house, with deliveries of milk twice a day and the dairy-maids making large quantities of butter and cream for the household and estate.

The Dairy

This was used for starage and not for preparation. It faces north and is provided with elaborate cooling arrangements served by water piped into the house from the hill above. On the marble slab in the middle of the room were kept jellies, mousses, blancmanges amd elaborate cold puddings of the period, which had to be prepared well in advance. Against the tiled walls the bowls and platters over the slate runnels held soups, custards, junkets and milk puddings for the Nursery, together with cream, chese, buttermilk and butter prepared in the room next door.

The Corridor

This runs the full length of the south wing. The windows give on to the Pantry Court, so called because it is overlooked by the Butler's Pantry. The tower on its far side has a staircase for the female servants and to its right, on the first floor, is a cage where milk for the Nursery could be stored.

Lady Robarte's Room

Here Mary, Lady Robartes conducted her houshold business, wrote her letters and planned her parochial charities.
The walls are papered in the "Briar Rose" pattern so popular for much of the last century. On them hang pictures of family pets ans photographs of Lady Roberta's childhood home, Kingweston in Somerset. The oak chest on the bookcase commemorates her launch of HMS Lion at Devonport dockyard in 1912.


The Lobby

The big game trophies introduce the strictly masculine preserve common to most late Victorian houses.


The Steward's Room

The steward was the traditional name for a land agent in the West Country, a legacy of the same office in medieval housholds throughout the country. As well as this room, the family also had two other estate offices in Cornwall, at Redruth and Liskeard. It is from the latter that much of the furniture in this room comes. The architect's floor plans for the rebuilding of the house are hung on the walls. At the time of the fire Silvanus Jenkin was the steward; successive members of this family served the Lanhydrock Estate for well over a hundred years. Any visiting tenant coming on buisiness could enter by the nearby door in state court.


The Billiard Room

At the end of the wing is the door to the Billiard Room, an essential part of a Victorian house with any pretensions to grandeur. "Its position", wrote J.J. Stevensonon his "House Architecture" (1880), "should be retired, so that men may be at ease in it, smoking and playing in their shirt sleeves, and to drown the knocking of the balls". Although the Billiard Room was traditionally regarded as a male preserve, there is plenty of evidence to show that at Lanhydrock the ladies also played the game.
The mahagony, slate-bedded table here was made by Burroughs & Watts. The school and college team photographs around the walls are an evocative reminder of the confidence with which the sons and heirs of the late Victorian landed gentry must have viewed their future life, a prospect so cruelly shattered for many by the First World War.

The Smoking Room

The last of the room in this area is furnished very much as the male equivalent on Lady Robarte's Room. Deep-buttoned armchairs, a thick Turkey carpet and warm mellow panelling provide a comfotable backdrop for the pictures and mementoes of school and university, and the trophies and paraphernalia of field and stream. No doubt the Smoking Room was used as a personal study as well as a common room for male house guests. Some of the photographes show the sons of the family at Eton, and they are often accompanied by a member of the Heathcoat-Amory and St. Aubyn families, donors to the National Trust of Knightshayes and St. Michael's Mount. Other mementoes now in this room can be seen in the turn-of-the-century photographs of their studies at Eton.

The Nursery Staircase

In the angle of the two wings, these oak stairs lead to both guest bedrooms and the Nurseries.


Captain Tommy's Bedroom

This room and the adjacent dressing room were used by Captain the Hon. Thomas Agar RobartesMP before his untimely death at the battle of Loos in 1915. The comfortably furnished room now houses the fitted suitcase that travelled with him to the front, and other mementoes of the curtailed life of the dashing elder son.


The Nursery Wing

It was designed by Richard Coad after the fire of 1881 to provide for the growing family of the 2nd Lord and Lady Robartes. The Nursery is a complete suite of rooms. linked to the servants' bedrooms above and the Kitchen below by the female servants' stairs. It incorpoartes a Scullery, Day and Night Nurseries, Nanny's Bedroom, a bathroom and lavatory, and a spare Nursery/Schoolroom.


The Nursery Scullery

It is placed as recommended by Robert Kerr in "The Gentlemen's House" (1871): "opening from the Day Nursery or close at hand". It contains a fireplace, sink, closets and shelving for the use of the nanny and nurserymaids.


The Day Nursery

This was one of the few multi-purpose rooms in the house. It was a sort of common hall where the children played and nanny worked for most of the day; where all eat their meals and nanny sat in the evening once the children were in bed.

Toys - Amongst many other items that survive from the family's time are the very finely carved walnut animals for a Noah's Ark made in Berne in 1856. The doll's-house is later, probably having been made in about 1902.

Musical-Instruments - A Kirkman Patented Improved Trichord upright piano, with three strings for all but lowest notes. London, late nientheenth-century.
The tubular bells hang from an oak frame reputedly made on the estate for a Agar-Robartes children.


The Night Nursery

At any one time this room accommodated three or four of the younger children. As they grew up, they were promoted to other bedrooms in the house. The room has a cheerful morning aspect and a comfortable fireside for "seasons of illness". Note the large fireguard used to air clothes.

The Nanny's Bedroom

Nanny was considered a senior member of the house staff, and furnishings in this room reflect her status. The youngest of the children would have slept near her.


The Nursera Bathroom

The scales and rule were used not only to keep a log of the height and weight of the Robartes children, but the children of guests as well.


The Nursery Corridor

Of particular interests is the Symphonium, a turn of the century musical box.


The Men's Staircase

These stone stairs lead into the quite seperate world of the servants. "The family constitute one community, the servants another", wrote Robert Kerr in "The Gentleman's House" (1871).
Immediately on the right is the luggage lift, in which heavy trunks and boxes arriving from the railway station on the edge of the park were loaded, lifted up to the main bedroom floor for unpacking and then up again to the attic on the second floor for starage.


The Housemaid's Closet

This closet served all the rooms on the first floor. Here the housmaids kept their equipment - metal buckets, brushes, dusters and polishes. Menservants delivered coal to each room and removed ashes, but all the slops from baths and wash basins were carried from the bedrooms in the white pottery pails and disposed of down the sluice under the windows by the chambermaids. This room is the only one above the ground-floor Servant's Hall where male and female servants on occasion might have to meet on common ground.
The Men's Staircase leads up to a set of attic bedrooms on the top floor, which was for the footmen.


The Linen Lobby

Here were stored sheets and pillowcases, blankets and towels, and the linen or lace runners which covered dressing and bedside tables. The house linen book reveals that in 1895, amongst many other items, there were 12 pairs of sheets and 24 pillowcases of fine quality and 24 pairs of sheets and 36 pillowcases of servant quality. There were 24 large bath towels, 24 round towels, 24 bath towels (Servants'), 48 house/chamber towels, 48 fine huckaback towels and another 24 with borders. There was never a laundry at Lanhydrock. The washing was sent to either the House of Mercy at Bodmin or St Faith's Home for Fallen Women in Lostwithiel, both of which were endowed by the family.
At the end of the Lobby a door leading into the original maids' bedrooms (not open), appoached by a seperate staircase which passed the Nursery on the way up. The keys to the connecting doors between the male and female servants' bedrooms were kept by the housekeeper.

The Servants' Bedroom

The blue and terracotta paint scheme on the staircase and passage is based on the original colours found here below later layers. It has been suggested that the strong blue kept away flies which often congregated in the attic areas.
"The servant problem" was not solely an interwar phenomenon ; the railway age had opened up opportunities for country people to travel to the towns in search of work, and by the 1880s a life of domestic service was not the only opportunity for which a young man or woman could hope. Nevertheless, in a remote area such as Cornwall, and a benevolent household such as Lanhydrock, there seems to have been little trouble in finding the large number of staff needed to run the house.
The Servants' Bedrooms are furnished with simple brass and iron bedsteads and pine furniture.


The Luggage Room

Dark and musty, this little room is strongly redolent of the railway age, when the smallest country station had porters to heave about the dome-topped trunks and heavy leather portmanteaux without which no Victorian family could travel.

The Footmen's Livery Room

In this central wardrobe the liveries for all the male servants were stored. Here their coats and waistcoats were cleaned and minor repairs undertaken.


The Teak Staircase

This is the first of the two main staircases of the house.


The Corner Room

Visitors are welcome to rest here. On the end wall hangs a handsome heraldic scroll of about 1630, recording the descent of Richard, 1st Lord Robartes of the earlier creation (c.1580 - 1634). Above the fireplace hang warrants from the Garter King of Arms in connection with the family's name and fine map of Cornwall, published in 1748.


The Corridor

Visitors will now begin to realise what a network of passages serves the house. This is a conscious expression of the Victorian ideal that rooms should be self-sufficient and seperate to provide private apartments. The eighteenth-century concept of a house built as a sequence of state rooms, where grand vistas and ostentations display were a mark of distinction, gave way to privacy and, except for certain rituals like eating, infromal living. A room therefore lost its value in a Victorian house if it was used as a passage to another room.


The Bedroom Passage

The walls are hung with late Victorian watercolours of Cornish scenes.


His Lordship's Room

In Lord Robarte's bedroom is a single half-tester bed of c.1860.The walls are covered in a copy of a paper designed by A.W.N. Puginfor the Robing Rooms of the House of Lords. The light fittings on pulleys are to be found in most of the bedrooms of the house. The 2nd Lord Robartes prefered to use a saucer bath in front of the fire rather than the large bath in the Bathroom.


The Bathroom

At one stage several bathrooms were planned for the house, but in the event only two seem to have been istalled, outside the Nursery: even the one here was originally built as a dressing-room. this is not as surprising as it may seem, since hosts of servants were available to fill hip-baths in the bedrooms. The massive cast-iron bath with its heavy taps and wide mahagony rim required a stool to climb into it.

Her Ladyship's Room

The early nineteenth-century four-poster bed comes from another house, but the room includes many of Lady Robarte's original furnishings, including the flamboyant Dresden porcelain which was a wedding present in 1878. The dressing-table is heavily draped with lace over satin in tune with the fashion of the time for covering surfaces liberally with decorative cloths, often hand-embroidered. The Robartes armorials in the plaster overmantel reflect the revived interest in heraldic display of the late Victorian era. The high barrel-vaulted ceiling here and in the adjacent rooms of the central part of the house was intended to echo the old ceiling which will soon be seen in the Gallery.

The Boudoir

Lady Robarte's very feminine sitting-room or boudoir is furnished with small tub chairs and giltframed watercolours and drawings of some of Lady Robarte's children and other members of the family. Following the accepted Victorian practice, the Boudoir is placed next to the Drawing Room so that the ebb and flow of public reception and private retirement could take place with convience.

The Drawing Room

All the main reception rooms at Lanhydrock are on the first floor, presumably because it was logical to plan them to connect with the great Gallery, which had survived the fire. The Drawing Room is no longer arranged as it was the end of the nineteenth century, as is evident when one looks at early photographs of the room, in which every inch is fuilled with furniture or ornaments in the most informal manner. This grand sitting-room was in daily use until the Second World War. when dificulties in blacking out the windows, and shortage of staff, forced Lord Clifden and his sisters to retreat to the Hall below. The alcove at the near end over the Entrance Porch provided a small seperate area for writing or study and was supplied with its own fireplace.
The introduction of some fine eighteenth-century furniture retrieved by the 7th Viscount from Wimpole Hall.Cambridgeshire before its sale in 1936 has given rise to the present rather formal appearance of the room.


The Gallery

Although it was saved from the fire by the timely use of dynamite to create a fire-break at its junction with the Drawing Room, the Gallery has undergone constant changes in its furnishing through the centuries. Its precise appearance in the early seventeenth century is not knwon, but a romantic impression may be gained through the imagination of Joseph Nash in a plate from his "Mansions of England in the Olden Time" (1841). The Long Gallery was a room of state and parade in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses, for the display of family portraits and as a place to exercise during inclement weather. In the eighteenth century such rooms were converted to hold libaries or continued to be used formally as picture or sculpture galleries. Both happened at Lanhydrock.
The Victorians who inherited long galleries tended to find them rather awkward rooms, too clongated for the sort of comfort required of a drawing-room and yet often occupying a position which demanded that they were brought into some sort of use. By the late nineteenth century the habit of arranging large reception rooms into small seperate sitting areas provided the solution at Lanhydrock, although the effect to our eyes may be that of a glorified lumber room. The Trust has deliberately thinned out the room and given it a more formal appearance again., in order that the books, family portrairs, the plaster ceiling and the space itself may be allowed to create the main impact. After the fire the plaster panelling and the bookcases were replaced by contemporary oak panelling and presses, but the delicate and deeply carved oak frieze survives from the earlier decoration of the room.

Books - The books in the Gallery are mainly seventeenth-century theological volumes collected by the 1st Earl of Radnor and his chaplain, Hannibal Gamon.
Also on display is one of the four volumes of the Lanhydrock Atlas. This survey of the 2nd Earl of Radnor's estates in Cornwall was undertaken by the London-based cartographer Joel Gascoyne between 1694 and 1699, and shows the many enclosures on his 40,000 acres in the county on 258 manuscript maps.

Plasterwork - The remarkable barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling was almost certainly finished just before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. The 24 panels into which it is divided show scenes from the Old Testament. The biblical texts on which they are based are given on the hand boards provided in the room, but the side, "Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac": on the north side, "The life of Jacob".
The fireplace overmantels on the south side depict "Saul throwing the javelin at David" and then "David taking the pitcher and spear from Saul's tent", with "David and Goliath" occupying the lunette above the doors. Above the windows at the far end are the arms of the Robartes fanmily of Truro and Lanhydrock.
The main ceiling panels are surrounded by smaller panels depicting a multitude of birds and beasts, some naturalistic, others possible of herladic or biblical significance. The plasterwork is perhaps attributable to a Devonshire family of plasterers, the Abbots of Frithelstock near Bideford, whose work appears in many country houses in Devon and Cornwall and whose family pattern book, handed down from generation to generation, together with some of the tools of their trade, survives in the Country Record Office in Exeter.

Pictures - The Hunt family portraits in this room, in black frames with elaborate enrichments, came from the family home at Mollington in Cheshire by inheritance to Anna Maria Hunt, who was bequeathed Lanhydrock by her uncle George Hunt in 1798. The labels were probably put on by Lord Clifden in the 1930s. Modern scholarship suggests that the artists are now as below.

Sculpture - Three nineteenth-century plaster copies of busts of the Roman emperors Nero (37 - 68) and Caracalla (176 - 217), and Medea, the avenging wife of Jason.

Furniture - A set of late eigteenth-century mahagony sidechairs, many with canvas-work embroidered covers, perhaps done by members of the family.
Two English figured walnut cabinet on contemporary stand, c. 1685 - 1700.
Chinese black laquered cabinet, elaborately painted in gold, c. 1740 - 60.
Large oak refectory table, c. 1660 - 1700.
Two iron "Armada" chests, probably made in Germany in the seventeenth century.

Ceramics - Tin-glazed earthenware guglets and plates, probably made in Dublin in the mid-eighteenth century.

Scientific Instruments - The eighteenth-century orrey or planetarium exhibited the movements of the planets then known around the sun (ie on the Copernican system) during the course of the year. The traditional name originated with an instrument made for Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orreyby John Rowley in the early eighteenth century. This example belonged to Lady Mendip, great-aunt of the 1st Lord Robartes.

The Morning Room

Again, this is now presented in a rather formal manner, and family photographs show it was furnished in much the same cluttered way as the Drawing Room anf Gallery in the late nineteenth century. A morning-room was a feature of most large Victorian houses - somewhere to wile away the time after breakfeast, reading the papers. It should ideally face east to catch the morning sun, and the room at Lamhydrock, facing north as it does, demonstrates the difficulty of designing all the rooms corrctly within the constraints of an earlier plan.
The overmantel features the coat of arms and motto of Robertas family, "Quae Supra", which is taken from St. Paul's warning:"Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth".

The Prayer Room

This was reduced to a recess off the corridor when a passenger lift was installed here in 1928. The ritual of family prayers was common in the strong religious climate of most Victorian households. The devout Robartes family would have prayed here every morning during the week, on Sunday there were regular services in the nearby church. The room at Lanhydrock is panneled in cedar, which strikes a refreshing note and complements the oak panelling in the surrounding area.


The Oak Staircase

This is the grand staircase of the house and stops at the first floor, thus serving only the pricipal reception rooms. At the half-landing, there was also a convenient passage linking the home with the family pew in the parish church of St Hydroc.

The Garden

In the seventeenth century the gardens immediately round the house were quite modest. An estate map of 1694 shows the Flower Garden to the south-east, the Bowling Green before the east wing (demolished in about 1780): and close by the Pheasantry the Kitchen Garden, the Peare Gardens, the New Orchard and the Wilderness. The whole, together with the house, occupied 22 acres. (1 acre = 4046 qm)
The seventeenth-century gardens were probably swept away during the eighteenth century, when the park, or lawn as it was then called, was brought right up to the walls of the building. In 1857, when Robartes valled in George Gilbert Scott to remodel the house, the present formal garden to the north and east was laid out. Originally very elaborate, the beds were simplified in the 1930s, and are now partly planted with roses and partly bedded out with spring and summer annuals.
The 29 sentinel yews are the Irish "Florence Court" variety (Taxus baccata"Fastigiata"), and between then are set out a number of bronze urns which once fotmed part of Lord Hertford's collection at the château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne, west of Paris. They were modelled in the late seventeenth century by Louis Ballin, goldsmith to Louis XIV, and many similar urns are still in the garden at Versailles. Bagatelle was built for Marie Antoinette in the 1770s by her brother-in-law, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards King Charles X, and it is possible that the urns were placed there then. Lord Hertford, who occupied Bagatelle in the mid-nineteenth century, bequeathed the urns to Sir Richard Wallace. Wallace in his turn left them to his secretary, Sir John Murray Scott, who removed them to Nether Swell, Gloucestershire. Theywere bought from his sister by the 7th Viscount Clifden, who brought them to Lanhydrock. To the north of the formal gardens are tennis and croquet lawns, divided by the Star Path which gave access to the seventeenth-century Wilderness, traces of which can be seen in arial photographs of the 1930s, although long since turfed over.
The church, in its atmospheric churchyard, forms an island in the garden. Above it the iron fence bounds the shrub garden originally laid out about 1860 by Lord Robartes. Most of its paths have survived, but its serpentine beds went before the First World War, and when the 7th Viscount Clifden inherited in 1930, he described the area as "nothing but Portugal laurel". He began replanting in 1933 with the big magnolias from Tibet, Sikkim and south China, now grown to their full height, which give such character to the place. The Trust has added many more in recent years and Lanhydrock is now renowned for its collection, which can be grown here.
Below by the big magnolias is the yew-hedged Circle, the southern half laid out before 1914, the northern half completed by the Trust in 1971, and filled with herbaceous plants which flower in the late summer. The "Tithe Barn" which overlooks the Circle is a Victorian creation. The doorways with pointed arches probably came from the house which the monks of Bodmin had here before the Dissolutiuon. The "arch" of the dummy window set in the gable was brought here when the chanel of the church was extended eastwards in 1886. The thatched cottage above the Circle was last occupied by Joseph Berry, who died in 1885, and provides a place for visitors to sit on a hot day, or to eat their picnics. Above it stands the Holy Well, rebuilt in the 1860s on the site of an enclosure named Well Park on the 1694 map, and undoubtedly the reason why the monks of Bodmin built their house here.
The upper slopes are planted with a typical "Cornish mixture" of rhododendrons, camelias and many other species. At the top of the hill, set on a mound, stands the granite Treffry Cross, which was brought here in 1890 from the Treffry crossroads at the top of the park, where it had long lain broken and forgotten. It is from this commanding position that Lord Robarte's nineteenth-century landscape can best be seen.
The park and estate are 377 acres.

The Church

The church is dedicated to St Hydroc, who is said to have come to Cornwall as a missionary from Ireland with his better-known brother Madron. Outside the porch stands a finely ornamented cross, originally of the "four-holed"type but now lacking its encircling ring. The shaft is ornamented on the front with a panel of plait-work design which takes the form of figure-of-eight knots. The back is covered with foliated scroll-work, thought to be thirteenth-century.
The building, like most Cornish churches, dates from the second half of the fifteenth century and was presumably rebuilt in its present from by the Augustinian Priory of St Petroc at Bodmin, to which Lanhydrock belonged. Of this period are the older of the pillars and arches on either side of the nave, the windows of the north and south aisles, most of the three-stage tower and the porch.
Soon after Sir Richard Robartes bought the estate, he seems to have repaired the building and to have marked his ennoblement by putting up the large plaster panel with the arms of King James I, dated 1621, in the north aisle, which has always been occupied by the Robartes family and their servants.
In the early nineteenth century the church was gutted of its old oak pews and fitted with rows of painted pine pews in the nave, facing north to a pulpit which stood under the Royal Arms. This arrangement was criticised as "ungodly"" by the clerics of the day but seems to have survived until Lanhydrock, which had been a perpetual curacy (really a private church for the Robartes family), was made into a "regular" parish in 1844 at the expense of Thomas James Agar-Robartes.
The church was fully restored in 1886 -8 by the 2nd Lord Robartes in memory of his parents. The only major alternations to the structure were at the east end where the chancel was extended to allow the insertion of a memorial window. Beneath it, the alabaster reredos representing "The Last Supper" was supplied by Earp & Hobbs of Kennington. The sanctuary was paved on mosaic and a new pulpit, priests' desks, altar rail and side-screens provided.

After a picnic we drove on to the manor house from Pencarrow.
This manor house is still we met this one for the Lady St. Aubyn in the private property in the lobby.
The Castle of St Michael's Mount als belonged to the St. Aubyn Family.
Pencarrow also has a lovely garden with peacocks.


Pencarrow(£ 4 per person)

Pencarrow lies at the foot of a valley between the Bodmin-Wadebridge and Bodmin-Camelford roads near the little village Washaway. It is approached through its well-planned woodland by a mile-long drive, passing an ancient fortified encampment and through banks of rhododrendons, camelias and hydrangeas. The present house was begun in the lifetime of the fourth Sir John Molesworth, and the building was completed after his death by his son, Sir John , fifth baronet who succeded his father in 1766 and died in 1775. The archirect was a young man,Robert Allanson, who came from York to build Pencarrow. In all probaibility this would have been his major work, as he died in 1773 aged thirty-eight.
The entrance front, which is in a simplified Palladian style, is on the eastern side; the long south frontage and the grey Delabole slate roofs have a more Cornish character. On the west there are traces of the original building. The back faces a courtyard and cottages and was probably the original front of an older house. The most interesting architectural feature is the inner hall, where marbled pillars support a vaulted ceiling and take the weight of a stone landing, reached by an elegant cantilever staircase.
The interior of the house owes much to the eighth baronet, Sir William Molesworth, who, at the time of his marriage in 1844, engaged the architectGeorge Wightwick (1802 - 1872), the partner of the well-known John Foulston of Plymouth, to carry out various alternations. He added the alcove to the Music Room, used the fine panelling from the old mansion house at Tetcott for the walls of this room and of the entrance hall, which he turned into a library, and installed the decorative cast-iron stove, supplied by the Plymouth firm of J. Hearder, in the inner hall. Subsequently, in 1919, Ernest Newton, R.A., P.P.D.I.B.A. 1914 - 16, modernised the interior of the house and its cottages and altered the stables for Sir Hugh Molesworth-St. Aubyn, thirteenth baronet.
The estate has been owned by the Molesworth family and their descendants, the Molesworth-St.Aubyns, since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, having been purchased from an Exeter family called Walker by the John Moldsworth of that time. Earlier it had belonged to the ancient families of Stapelton and Sergiaux, and after them it is said to have been owned by a family who took their name from it, the de Pencarrows, who are supposed to have joined the abortive Cornish uprising in 1497 against an unjust levy on tin. The head of the house was consequently attained of treason and conveyed his lands to a nobleman, Henry, first Lord Marney, of neighbouring Colquite, hoping he would use his influence to save de Pencarrow's life. From Lord Marney the estate passed to his heirs, the Walkers, and so to Molesworth.
This John Molesworth was the Auditor or Commissioner for the Duchy of Cornwall to Queen Elizabeth and, as recorded in the Heralds' Visitation of 1620, the manuscript of which may be seen in the house, he was the younger son of John Molesworth of Helpston, Northamptonshire. He married Catherine, daughter and heiress of John Hender of Botreaux Castle near Tintagel. His grandson, Colonel Molesworth, settled in St. Katherin's, Jamaica, becoming President of the Island Council in the reign of Charles II. He was appointed Governor and created a baronet by William IIIin 1689, as a reward for loyalty during the religious persecutions which took place in the island during the reign of Charles II.
On his death the following year, the baronetcy passed by special remainder to his elder brother, Sir John Molesworth of Pencarrow, who had been knighted by Charles II and appointed Vice-Admiral of the northern parts of Cornwall. He died in 1716. From his great-grandson, Sir John Molesworth, fifth baronet, the successor Molesworth baronets and also the present Molesworth-St.Aubyn family, who succeded to Pencarrow on the death of Sir Lewis Molesworth, eleventh baronet, in 1912, are descended. The present head of the family is Sir William Molesworth-St.Aubyn, sixteenth baronet.
Music Room

The tour of the house begins in the Music Room, where the outstanding features are the rococo ceiling, depicting the four seasons, and the fine mouldings of birds, fruit and flowers which decorate the maple-grained panelling. A painting of Roche Rock by a West Country artist in a Chippendale-style rococo frame hangs above an unusual chimney plaque, showing a hound with retrieved game. Two portraits by Sir Oswald Birley of Lieutenant-Colonel Valentine and Lady Aline Vivian, the great-grandparents of the sixteenth baronet, hang on either side. They were painted in 1913 and 1940 respectively. Beneath them a pair of Meissen courtiers, dressed as flower sellers, stand on Regency rosewood tables. The Adam suite was, sadly, painted black over its watergilt. It is thought that this was done because they stood in the room where a deceased member of the family would lie in state awaiting burial.

Entrance Hall

The adjoining Entrance Hall is well proportioned with ceiling and walls panelled in pinewood ornamented with bolection moulding. Over the mantelpiece is a picture by James Northcoteof the sixth baronet, Sir William Molesworth.
Above the bookcases and framed in the panelling are a set of portraits, mostly of members and friends of the Arscott family of Tetcott, near Holsworthy in North Devon, whose property Sir Wiliam inherited in 1788 on the death of the last John Arscott, as a result of the marriage of his great-grandfather. Sir John Molesworth, third baronet, to Jane Arscott in 1699. Today Iona Lady Molesworth-St.Aubyn, M.B.E., D.I., the late fifteenth baronet and daughter of the late Admiral Sir Francis Loftus Tottenham, K.C.B., C.B.E., lives at Pencarrow with her youngest son. James. Her eldest son, Sir William Molesworth-St.Aubyn, sixteenth baronet, lives on the Tetcott estate.
Among this set of portraits is one of Sir John Yonge, first baronet, of Culliton, who was Member of Parliament for Plymouth in the reign of Charles I. Secluded with other members by Cromwell, he was denied entrance to the House of Commons, and had the courage to sign his name to a remontrance inveighing against the tyranny of Cromwell and asserting the right to sit in Parliament. The pretty woman beside him is his wife, and on the opposite wall is their grand-daughter, Gwen Arscott of Tetcott. Among the books are a number which belonged to her, signed in spidery handwriting and dated around 1713. The contents of the china cupboard include a set of "famille verte" plates of K'ang Hsi period (1622 - 1722), showing a small boy playing in a garden, and an unusual collection of glass pens made, it is believed, for the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in 1851 to show the skill of the English glass-makers.

Drawing Room

The way to the Drawing Room from entrance hall is concealed in a jib door made to look like a continuation of the bookcase that line the wall. On entering one is struck by the rose-coloured flowered damask curtains and coverings of the giltwood Adam suite. The material was "treasure" from a Spnaish ship, the "Santissima Trinidada", which was captured off the Phillipines by Admiral (then Captain) George Ourry, a relative by marriage of Sir William Molesworth, sixth baronet, in the warship Panther after a long action in 1762. Around the walls are family portraits. A portrait of Sir John St. Aubyn, third baronet, of Clowance, near Praze, Cornwall, hangs above a Louis XVI settee or canapé, embroidered with contemporary floral "gros point". This Sir John is remembered for his incorruptibility during the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, who said of him "The little Cornish baronet is the only Member of Parliament whose price I do not know". Another small Sir John, posing with a parrot, painted by Guiseppe Dupra, hangs over the mantelpiece.
The cheerful-looking man in the buff coat was the last John Arscott of Tetcott, painted by James Northcote. This John Arscott was a well-known character, who typified the squire of his time and was described by R.S. Hawker. He had, among his servants, the last of the private gentlemen's Jesters, Black John, who used to live with Arscott's hounds and hunt with them, and when the gentlemen had dined well, he would entertain them, not only by jests but by robust antics - his specialities were mouse-swallowing and sparrow-mumbling-plucking a sparrow with his mouth and without using his hands. John Arscott had a pet toad, which used to feed with slops on his dining-table and which was finally killed by a pet raven.
The man in armour, painted in the manner of Wissing, was Thomas,eight Earl of Pembroke, Lord High Admiral in 1708, whose grand-daughters, Barbara and Catherine Morice, married one a Molesworth and the other a St. Aubyn, bringing much of their family property of Werrington with them. Beneath his portrait is an unusually large miniature by R. Thorburn, on ivory, of Andalusia - the wife of Sir William Molesworth, the Victorian politician. She may also be seen by the door into the inner hall, pianted as a child by Sir William Ross. Nineteenth-century Sévres plates and ormolu-mounted porcelain candelabra., decorated with Madonna lilies, stand above the ornate brass-fitted grate, set in a white marble Adam chimney piece.

Inner Hall

In the Inner Hall are two outstanding paintings by Samuel Scottof London Bridge and the Tower of London respectively, signed and dated 1755.

Beneath these, stand two George IIpine side-tables, ornately carved in the style of William Kent, with grey and pink marbled tops, on which is part of a large Chamberlayne's Worcester dinner service. Four seascapes, fine examples of the work of Charles Brooking, hang opposite the full length portrait by Sir Henry Raeburnof Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth, seventh baronet, typically standing with his gun in his hand and his spaniel at his feet. A picture of King Charles I, seated at his trial, hangs on the upper staircase wall: the artist, Edward Bower, is said to have attended the trial making sketches of the King, and afterwards to have painted four variants, showing the King in slightly differing moods. This portrait and the one of Charles II higher up the stairs by Mary Bealeprobably came to Pencarrow through the descendants of Sir William Morice of Werrington, a man who served Charles II well, both before and after his restoration and who was rewarded by being made Secretary of State for England.

Pink Bedroom

Sir William Morice's portrait by an unknown arstist hangs in the Pink Bedroom with that of his grandson, Nicholas Morice. Nicholas Morice's great-grandoughter, Catherine St. Aubyn, was a talent pupil of John Opie, the Cornish artist. As well as her delightful self-portrait, she painted the picture of her husband, The Rev. John Molesworth, Rector of St. Breoke. A portrait of her brother, Sir John St. Aubyn, fifth baronet, by Sir William Beechey,hangs over the mantelpiece. This bedroom has a George IVfour-poster bed with a moulded tester and spirally reeded posts, and beside it are little Victorian footstools. The Canton toilet set in underglaze blue and gold is nineteenth century. There is a collection of Chinese porcelain in glass-fronted cupboard. The Regency grained rosewood spoon-back chairs are covered with Jacobean embroidery.

Nursery

In the Nursery, Nanny's bed has the coverlet designed and embroidered by members of the Cornwall Federation of Woman's Instituts to portray the flora and fauna of Cornwall. It was worked for Denman College and is now here on permanent loan. Here too, are several antique dolls dressed in the beautiful made long baby clothes that have been used in turn by many generations of the family, the last being Sir Arscott and Lady Molesworth-St.Aubyn's children, William, James and Emma. By the fireplace is a box, circa 1830, decorated with a style of pen painting and containing a collection of shells said to have been made by the two little Molesworth sisters.


Corner Bedroom

The four-poster bed in the Corner Bedroom probably occupied by Sir Arthur Sullivan in July 1882 when he composed much of the music for "Iolanthe" whilst staying at Pencarrow, is of the period of William IV. On it is a fine hand-worked Guipere d'Art bedspread. The Mason's ironstone vase (circa 1840) on the mantelpiece imitates the Chinese style of the "famille" rose Chi'en Lung(1736 - 95) vases on either side. Above them hangs a portrait of Jane Arscott, Lady Molesworth, who married the third baronet in 1699.


Bath Room

In the connnecting Bath Room is a cast iron bath (circa 1920) on a marble base. On the chair is Sir Arscott Molesworth-St.Aubyn's mess undress uniform of a Lieutenant Colonel of the Sixtieth Rifles.


The Boudoir

The Boudoir, with a connecting door to her bedroom, was the personal sitting-room of the lady of the house and looks south over the Italian Garden. The pictures in this room, with the exception of a pastel by Rosalba Carriera, are mainly Dutch. The large landscape over the fireplace is an interesting nineteenth-century forgery by an unknown hand fraudulently signed P. Potter which combines the styles of both the eighteenth-centuty artists P.Potter and A.Cuyp.The small pictures on either side are by Nicholas Berchem and Barent Gaal. Pieter Neefs painted the Gothic cathedral interiors. The tip-up tripod table, with a painted floral design above an a religious theme below is also Dutch. The eighteenth-century marble case clock is, however, French, and the chair covers are modern copies in glazed cotton of the nineteenth-century patterned material in the ante-room. The Regency grained rosewood spoon-back chairs are covered with Jacobean embroidery.

Eagles support the marble and gesso tops respectively of the gilt eighteenth-century Italien console and George I tables on the stone floored landing outside. The black-painted sofa and chairs are part of the Adam suite seen in the Music Room. The marble-topped centre table is George IV, circa 1825, veneered with ebony, inlaid with brass in the manner of Boulle. The protraits of Sir John St. Aubyn, third baronet, and Sir John Molesworth, fourth baronet, are attributed to John Smibert (1688 - 1751), whose sitters' book records that he painted the two men in 1724 and 1727, before the emigrated to America, where he made his reputation as a portrait painter.


Back Staircase

A painting by Popham of the cavalier, Sir Thomas St. Aubyn, hangs at the top of the Back Staircase. A lady also by Popham, in full mourning hangs next to him. Both Tudor ladies are painted on wooden panels. The pair of large local landscapes painted (circa 1750) by an unknown journeyman artist show. Egloshayle Church, beisde the River Camel, and the famous fifteenth-century Bridge-on-Wool which still carries the heavy twentieth-century traffic over the river to Wadebridge.
The two watercolour paintings by A. E. Chalon at the foot of his staircase are of The Rt. Hon. Sir William Molesworth, eight baronet, P.C., M.P., and his wife, Andalusia. She poses in her drawing room, he sits with his retriever in the garden which he created. The great rockery was his creation - the granite stones being brought from Bodmin Moor by horse and cart; and he planted the earlier trees in Pencarrow's fine specimen conifer collection. The watercolours of the garden of his time were painted by Samuel Cook. The other portrait here of Sir William by George Hayter, a study for his great picture that still hangs in the House of Commons, shows an attractive young man at the start a meteoric political career. A philosophical radical, he worked for reform both at home and in the colonies, was mainly responsible for abolishing penal transportation to Australia, and eventually died young whilst Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord Palmerston's government in 1855. Here, too, is the original illuminated Grant of Arms to Sir Thomas Seynt Aubyn, dated 1545.


Dining Room

The family portraits in the Dining Room were painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., and from possibly the most important family series still intact. At the far end of the room is Mrs. Ann Molesworth, a pale lady in a flowered dress, with her brother-in-law, the fifth Molesworth baronet, in his wedding clothes and her husband, Mr. William Molesworth of Wembury, in red velvet. The black mourning bands around their throats have been added at a later date, probably on the death of their father. Sir John Molesworth also figures above the fireplace as a Colonel of Militia in his red unifrom; once more, in undress militia uniform; and yet again as an older man.
Sir John had considerable mining interests and, in 1771, with John Eliot of Port Eliot and Humphrey Praed of London, formed a banking house named Sir John Molesworth & Company, which eventually became Lloyds Bank. Exceptionally, between the windows, is a picture of Jonas Hanway, traveller and philanthropist, by Sir Joshua's pupil, James Northcote. The granite chimney-piece has a plaque illustrating the Aesop fable and the Spanish proverb - "Take what you want" said God, "Take it and pay for it". A bear has knocked over a hive and he and a monkey are enjoying the comb but are being attacked by the bees. On the mantelshels is a garniture of three Japanese Imari vases and covers, and on the side tables are two early ice-cream pails. The eighteenth-century pewter has the crest of the Arscott family engraved on it.

Ante Room

The tour ends in the Ante Room, which, according to old pictures showing the drive passing the south front of the house, could have been an earlier main entrance. When Sir Hugh Molesworth-St.Aubyn, thirteenth baronet, came to Pencarrow in 1918, Lady Molseworth-St.Aubyn discovered, beneath ugly brown paint, the craftsman-made doors of Spanish mahagony, which she had repolished. She also found the nineteenth-century linen wall-covering, patterned with butterflies and birds on a background of bamboo, in an earlier Chines style, under layers of wall-paper. The material was cleaned and rehun, with the happy effect that it is in this room that the feeling of stepping back into the past is most urgent; the ladies and gentlemen in their elegant clothes seem to wait of others of their time to walk in and sit in the bergères, made by Henri Jakob. master cabinet maker in the time of Louis XVI: or open the Chinese coromandel incised lacquer cabinet; or admire the two very different landscapes between the windows, both by Richard Wilson, one of the Torre delle Grotte near Naples, and the other of the Thames at Marble Hill.
Particulary interesting is the large Ch'ien Lung "famille rose" bowl on the central table. On the inside is the Chinese artist's impression of Pencarrow House, horsemen, a pack of foxhounds and their quarry, probably taken from a drawing sent out to China for the purpose. The outside is decorated with a Chinese agricultural scene.
The focal point of the room, however, is the beautiful conversation piece by Arthur Devis, painted in 1754, of the four Misses St. Aubyn, daughters of Sir John St. Aubyn, third barronet, in a garden overlooking St. Micheal's Mount.

The portrait of their brother, Sir John St. Aubyn, fourth baronet, hangs beside a painting of his wife posing with a parrot. Their three children are pictured on the opposite wall, each fondling a pet dog. All five were painted by J. S. C. Schaak, a Dutch artist who worked in London between 1761 and 1769. One of theses St. Aubyn children, Catherine, the young girl in blue and white, married her first cousin, the Reverend John Molesworth, who was the younger son of Sir John Molesworth, fifth baronet, and his second wife, Barbara St. Aubyn, the lady in pearl grey (extreme right) in the conversation piece over the fireplace. It is from the marriage of John and Catherine in 1790 that the present Molesworth-St.Aubyn family are descende. Thus was brought together, also, the family collection of pictures and furniture that may be seen in Pencarrow today.


Pencarrow Gardens

The Gardens at Pencarrow were designed and laid out by the radical statesman Sir William Molesworth, Bt., P.C., M.P., from 1831 during intervals in his parliamentary sessions, until his early death whilst Secretary of Statefor the Colonies in 1855. He startes by converting the ugly lawn in front of the house to present beautifully proportioned sunken Italien Garden centred on the fountain, and then built on its east side the great granit rockery, using large blocks of granite. These were carted from Bodmin Moor by his tenants, grateful for his help during the bad times before the repeal of the Corn Laws. An ancient Cornish cross found on the estate now stands above the rockery.

By 1842 he was laying out the mile-long carriage drive and lining it with specimen conifers obtained mainly from famous nurserymen, such as Veitch of Exeter, who had obtained their seed direct from Douglas, Lobb, Hooker, Wallich and the other great botanical explorers of the day. The drive was followed in 1848 by the amenity woodlands around the Iron Age "Pencarrow Rounds" fort through which it passed, and then by the lake, formed by damming the valley well above the Italian Gardens, and by the American Gardens beyond it, planted originally only with species from North America.
His last task was to plant up the Green Drive leading to the Camelford Gate. Shortly before his death he was able to say that he had planted a specimen of every conifer, except ten, known to man considered sufficiently hardy to stand a chance of surviving the British climate.
Many of the trees that plante have, of course, died since. But many of his "Araucaria aracana", which acquired their common name of "Monkey Puzzle" here (a guest, Charles Austin, saying to his host after some thought, "that tree would puzzle a monkey") and some of his Cryptomeria Japonica (Japanese Cedar) now hugely layered, survive in the main drive, together with a fine Abies nordmanniana(Caucasian Fir), a Picea Polita(Japanese Tiger-tail Spruce) with the biggest bole known in Britain, and various other specimens. Notable, too are his very rare Taxodium distichum"Nutans" (the Pond Cyprus from southern USA), planted in 1841 near the Italien Gardens and now the oldest known, and the largest Cedrus deodora(Deodar Cedar) in the country, on the East Lawn.
Sir William's work was continued after his death by his widow, and then by his sister Mrs. Mary Ford, to whom we owe particulary the new Chamaecyparis cultivars on the East Lawn and the two fine Chilean podocarps, P. nubigenus and P. salignus, the former very rare in England, below the lake. Sir William's relative and eventual succsessor, Sir Hugh Molesworth-St. Aubyn, Bt., in 1928 planted many of the younger mature trees in the collectioon, including the lovely Picea breweriana (Brewer's Weeping Spruce) at the back of the Drive Plantations near their upper end: and his son, Sir John Molesworth-St. Aubyn, Bt., C.B.E., who succeded his fahter in 1942 was responsible for many of the older rhododrendons, camellias and azaleasthat now fill the drive with colour in the spring and early summer.

Lt. Col. Sir Arscott Molesworth-St.Aubyn, Bt., M.B.E., the fifteenth baronet, made a start in the early seventies on clearing much of the gardens that had become derelict during and after the Second World War and on replacing many of the casualities among the specimen conifers, and other broadleaved trees and shrubs, such as Quercus robur(English Oak) and Cockspur Thornsand Maples, which turn their leaves to wonderful colours in the autumn; and also on extending the collections.
By 1991 he had planted out more than 160 different species of specimen conifers from all over the world - many introduced since Sir William's day, more than 570 different species and hybrids of the genus. Rhododendron, and more than sixty different Camellias; as well as many other broadleaved trees and flowering shrubs, often too tender to be grown succesfully out of doors except in the far west of Britain. All of these are to be seen in the garden today.

Temperature: circa 22°C - at first a little rain, then cloudy and sunny

Driven miles: 86 = 138 km